Meaning

(transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter..

Definitions by Sense

1. (transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter.
2. (intransitive, of a person or animal) To become fat or fatter.
3. (transitive) To make thick or thicker (often something containing paper, especially money).
4. (intransitive) To become thick or thicker.
5. (transitive) To make (soil) fertile and fruitful.
6. (intransitive) To become fertile and fruitful.

Example Sentences

We must fatten the turkey in time for Thanksgiving.

And if the mat[t]er be too little, the vertue of digestion fayleth, and the bodye is dryed, and if the matter and meate be moderate, the meats is well digested, and the bodye fattened, the heart comforted, kinde heate made more, the humors made temperate, & wit made cleere:

In that classroom full of oily potato-chip-fattened adolescents, she was everyone’s ideal of translucent perfume-advertisement femininity.

He gradually fattened in the five years after getting married.

The Laplanders, possessing a country where corn will not grow, make bread of the inner bark of trees; and Linneus reports, that swine there fatten on that food […]

His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear into a sombre threatening dusk […]

Mushrooms fatten in the warm September rain.

“You horrible old man, you’ve always tried to turn Erik into a slave, to fatten your pocketbook! […]”

Word Forms

• fattens
• fattening
• fattened

Synonyms for fatten

Related Words

When Should You Use Fatten?

Use fatten when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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